This invention relates generally to the field of financial transactions, and in particular to the establishment of credit services between merchants and credit service providers. More specifically, in one specific aspect the invention relates to the establishment of merchant accounts with credit card transaction processing entities.
Financial transactions involving the use of presentation instruments, such as credit cards, play an important role in today's economy. A typical credit card transaction proceeds by extracting account information from the credit card, typically using a point of sale device at a merchant location, and submitting the account information along with a requested payment amount to a processing system. Such a processing system may involve the merchant's bank, a credit card association, such as VISA or MasterCard, and the issuer's bank as is known in the art.
Hence, in order to process a credit card transaction, a merchant must typically establish an account with a processing organization. Because the processing organization takes on certain financial risks when agreeing to process a merchant's transactions, an application and underwriting process typically takes place before an account is opened. For example, an account may be established by first requiring the merchant to fill out a credit application. The credit application is then sent to an underwriter who reviews information in the application to determine whether the merchant would be a suitable client. If so, the account is established, and the merchant may begin accepting at least certain types of credit cards as payment for their goods or services.
Currently, much of the application and underwriting process may be both manual and paper intensive. As such, the process for opening an account may be inefficient and time consuming. Further, inconsistent decisions on the suitability of a given merchant may vary from underwriter to underwriter. Still further, such a system suffers from being unable to suitably monitor the effectiveness of the sales force gathering the application information.
Hence, this invention is related to ways to improve the merchant account initiation and underwriting process. The invention is also related to ways to track such accounts, once established.